Wednesday 4th June 2014

4210/17129

It was Me2's turn to attempt the 6 and three quarter mile run today. Since he broke the hour barrier his form has not been good. He only managed 3 miles last week before having to give in, whilst Me1 continues to improve and has a PB of 54.08 (some five minutes faster than his more hedonistic rival). I would have thought that Me2 would be more competitive than Me1 in this race, but his spirit seems to be broken. He set off with hope in his heart today, but he was immediately a minute a mile off the pace set by Me1 and from then on just got slower. With three miles down and trailing Me1's comparative time by over 3 minutes it seemed like today was going to be a real test of Me2's mental strength. Would he dig in and at least improve on his own PB or would he crumble with the disappointment? It turned out to be the latter. He was broken by his failure, unable to comprehend how he could be running so much worse against an athlete who, on paper at least, was his equal. This time he managed four miles (in an embarrassing time of 36.39) before juddering to a halt.

Is his lifestyle catching up with him? Why is he doing so badly of late? We can only speculate. But it leaves Me1 in an enormously advantageous position for the next run. When they get the time to return to the snooker board it will be interesting to see if this psychology has any effect on the result.

I didn't make any progress with the play as I had to get other bits and pieces done (including next week's Metro article - though luckily Morph came to my rescue for that - and can't believe I missed the convoluted "Morpheus in the Underworld" pun for my cellar-dwelling mutant clay figure animation in yesterday's blog). But a few more thematic ideas gelled in my head as I struggled with the run.

I also had a preview for "Lord of the Dance Settee". In a way I wish I hadn't put any of these until a time that I was likely to have the play out of the way, but overall it's probably a good thing that I have quite a few lined up. It looks like I am writing the stand-up show by stealth. I am, if anything, further ahead than usual with this. It's going to be a challenging couple of months, but hopefully I can come out of it with two good shows. I've still got a month to perfect the play script, which is plenty of time. The issue is that it's going to be hard to get a really strong cast without having something to show them. "Trust me, it's going to be really good when I've actually written it" generally isn't enough to tempt people in.

This week's Metro column about the time that Emma Kennedy tried to murder me (you've pretty much read it, it's the blog from this time last week) is up here.